An Anthropology of Loss: Exploring the Spectral Maps of the Displaced Armenians from Hadrut, Nagorno-Karabakh

By Anita Khachaturova

ÉDITION
Routledge

COLLECTION

Ethnopolitics

Abstract

This article offers an anthropology of loss by examining how Armenians from Hadrut, Nagorno-Karabakh, experience the lost space of homeland. It explores the presence of lost spatialities in the everyday lives of displaced communities through a hauntology of space, drawing on Derrida’s concept of haunting as ‘neither living nor dead, present nor absent—it spectralizes.’ The article introduces ‘spectral mapping,’ a method using drawings of Hadrut to represent the spectrality of the experience of displacement. Moving beyond sedentarist/anti-sedentarist paradigms in refugee studies, it contributes to anthropologies of exile by proposing a framework for understanding the agency of lost places.

Mis à jour le 21 octobre 2025